


You'll Always Be What You Always Were

by neilegni



Category: The Office (US)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-03
Updated: 2010-01-03
Packaged: 2017-10-05 16:56:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,230
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/43934
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/neilegni/pseuds/neilegni
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Then you got what you wanted and months later you still can't enjoy it because you still don't believe in it. You're frustrated because you just can't let yourself be happy."</p><p>Title borrowed from Stephen Sondhiem's "Sorry,Grateful".</p>
            </blockquote>





	You'll Always Be What You Always Were

_**You'll Always Be What You Always Were**_

Title: You'll Always Be What You Always Were  
Fandom: The Office  
Rating: PG 13-M?

 

His bedroom is a testament to his character. At once it manages to be tidy and messy. Artfully disorganized, he once told you. Things might be out of order, but he can still find them when they're needed. As you start spending more time together, you start to see your influence in his room and his life. Your sketches hang on the bulletin board. Your spare toothbrush stands next to his in the bathroom. Your spare clothes live in one of his dresser drawers. He makes his bed, puts clothes away, avoids leaving food in his room.

You like to think it's all for you.

The lights are off and bodies still intertwined long after furious movement has settled to heavy breathing and tired limbs. You can make out the pin pricks of stars through the blinds, glowing silver and bright, farther away than you can comprehend, and the world feels dark and quiet. His heart beats against your back and his slow, steady breath is warm on your neck. His hands are wrapped around your middle and you can feels him sleepily tracing the skin around your belly button and you never thought you could be so close to another person. There is a restless energy that runs through your exhausted veins that makes you long to clutch at the man beside you with all of your strength to prove that he won't shatter at your touch. To prove he isn't imaginary. To prove that this love that you share is really as suspiciously perfect and true and whole as it appears.

You turn over and press your head into his chest and feel the warmth of his body against your own. It's too good to be true. You feel like you're just waiting to lose your footing, to have the floor pulled out under tentative steps. You're waiting to see the real Jim; the one who doesn't want to go out because there's a game on television. The one who won't do the dishes because the remaining congealed food in the pan looks gross. The one who begins to rely on your constant presence in his life and forgets why the two of you got together in the first place.

Of course he has his faults. It's just that you have to strain to see them, which is frightening and different because just a year ago your relationship was just one struggle after another.

It's only a short matter of time before something goes horribly, horribly wrong and you see him for the man he really is.

He doesn't know how the suspicions and insecurities swim through your mind. You've never mentioned it, and why try to start problems? You silently question every hug and kiss and wonder how long it will be before "I love you" loses its aching honesty. You analyze every word and touch and movement and action for indications of an end.

It's funny, because for years you didn't know what you wanted. There was an emptiness in your life that you thought you could fill with commitment and flower arrangements. When he kissed you in the dark office, heavy warm hands on lavender silk, your mind spun and you realized that maybe those trashy romantic comedies really did have some merit. Maybe the romantic score didn't swell, and you didn't feel dizzy, and you didn't see fireworks, but you definitely felt something different. You felt secure in arms that pulled you close and you felt passion and urgency in his kiss, and you felt terrified because you knew it was the beginning of an end.

Then the emptiness grew because you knew what you wanted, but you just couldn't have it. He left because of you. He dated Karen to replace you. He did what he could to avoid and ignore you. You made bad decisions and earned wounds that blistered and scarred and left permanent marks. You went through the motions: moved out, started over, lived alone for the first time, worked, ate, slept, ached.

Then you got what you wanted. And months later, you still can't enjoy it because you still don't believe in it. You're frustrated because you just can't let yourself be happy.

\--

She's magic beneath you and working her with your fingers, you observe her. Her body moves freely, pulling you closer, pushing you away, her eyes sealed shut and her head moving to the side. She gasps and takes deep, ragged breaths and sighs finally as she pulsates around your fingers. It shocks you that you can be so intimately attached to someone. But with the other women, Katy, Karen, and the ones before, it was a fight for pleasure, a competition. Who could get the most while giving the least? With Pam, you want to give her everything and you don't expect anything in return. That's how you know that this is something different.

When you push into her, you pretend that you don't see the tears escape the corners of her eyes.

There is something inside Pam that you don't understand and that she hasn't explained. Sometimes it feels like she isn't all the way there. She loses herself easily in a sketch, in a book, in her thoughts, in a game of solitaire. You want to reach out and grab her back because she is your's and you don't want to let her go.

Sometimes you see the hurt in her eyes and the sorrow in her smile and even though the newly confident Pam has shone through, you can still see her sadness lurking beneath. She tries to hide it, but you know that it's still there. Sometimes she stiffens under your touch and you pretend not to notice. Sometimes she averts your eyes when you say "I love you". Sometimes she rolls away from you in the night and you fear that she's trying to distance herself from you. You don't know how to tell her how devastated you would be if she left.

You want to show her how much she means to you, but you don't really know how. You wish you could tell her that when the sun shines golden and warm across her face you feel like you're in the presence of an ethereal being. You wish you could show her the chills you get when her fingers dance across your skin. You wish you could express that in each of her movements, you are seeing her for the first time. Every day is precious and learning how to live with her makes you wonder how you ever lived without her.

But you don't know how to say any of these things, so you pull her closer to you, bury your face in her hair and inhale her scent.

You aren't some romantic knight in shining armor. You're cool, sarcastic, kind of an asshole, and you know it. It doesn't bother you because she can throw it right back with the rest of them, but showing her this softer side would leave you vulnerable, and if there is anything Jim Halpert is not, it is vulnerable.

And you're scared she'll leave, but even more afraid she will stay and discover just how helpless you'd be without her.


End file.
